Aside from some chilly weather over the last 10 days, the Upper Madison continues to fish well this October and we are officially out of the deep freeze for the time being. The forecast is calling for highs in the 50’s through next Wednesday and crowds have been relatively small, so now is a great time to hit the river if you get the chance.
The Upper Madison continues to fish well through September. While the smoke has put a slight damper on the hopper fishing we are still getting good fish to come up to the big dry in the afternoons and nymphs and streamers have been working well in the morning. Water temps have been staying between 52 and 62 degrees which is about perfect for this time of year, and it looks like we have a little rain in the forecast for this weekend which should clear out the smoke for a couple of days or so.
It’s been a hot one out there over the last week, with daytime highs consistently bringing the mercury up into the low 90’s but the Upper Madison continues to fish well through it all. Luckily the forecast is calling for temperatures dropping back into the low to mid 80’s starting this week which should make for many pleasant afternoons. We saw another bump in flows out of the dam in order to help cool the river off and we are now sitting at over 1,300 cfs at the Kirby gauge and 1,700 cfs at Varney which are great levels for both wade and float fishing this time of year.
The Upper Madison has been fishing well lately, and we finally got a little bump in the flow out of Hebgen last week due to increasing daytime temperatures. Things are definitely not as consistent as what we saw during the first two weeks of July, but that usually happens as we start to transition from fishing a wide variety of aquatic insects to a smaller percentage of caddis and spinners and then into terrestrials. The best window of fishing seems to be from around 10:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. and then again in the evening where you will still find caddis and Eperous spinners hitting the water from 7:00 p.m. until dark in the upper stretches. If you’re an early bird, dawn to 9:00 a.m. is definitely the best window for throwing streamers so there is a time slot for just about every method of fishing right now.
The Upper Madison continues to fish well throughout its entirety, and the dry fly fishing in the wade section with caddis and PMDs has been particularly good over the last week. Despite low flows out of Hebgen, we are still sitting above 1,000 cfs above the West Fork with the lower river hovering between 1,600 and 1,800 cfs which are still great water levels for this river. We should start to see the flows increased later this week as Hebgen Lake is getting close to full pool.
The Upper Madison has been fishing very well lately. Flows have been dropping out of the dam each day as NW Energy is trying to get to full pool by the end of the month, but the creeks are still putting in enough water to compensate for it and keeping the banks fishy in the float section. The river is gin clear in the upper wade section, with the West Fork still putting in a small stripe of dirty water down the left side. Once it mixes you are looking at around 3.5-4 feet below Palisades and we should start to see it clear up by the weekend or early next week.
Flows on the Upper Madison continue to rise and we should start to see them level off once it hits 3,500 cfs at the Kirby Gauge above the West Fork. Floating under Sun West and Wolf Creek Bridges is still a no go, so you don’t want to put a boat in at Lyon’s Bridge until we start to see water levels get below 2,700 cfs (or lower if you are in a high sided boat/raft). Visibility is around 8″-10″ above the West Fork and will only get worse the further you go downstream towards Ennis; however, the sub-surface fishing is still good in the upper wade stretch.
The Upper Madison is still fishing very well this May, and we are just getting into our Spring runoff around here. Last week we saw a steady amount of rain which brought the river up and got the creeks flowing again. However, as is commonly the case during Memorial Day weekday, colder weather and snow in the mountains seized up the flows from the West Fork of the Madison and Cabin, Beaver, and Indian Creeks. With the forecast calling for highs in the 70’s and 80’s in Cameron this coming week, expect to see the river on the rise once again, and with Hebgen Lake at 89% percent full, I wouldn’t be surprised if we start to see the flows out of the dam increased in another 7-10 days as well.
The Upper Madison has been fishing well this month, and temperatures have been nice and cool in the evenings to prevent a premature, full-scale runoff for the time being. We definitely have a little more color in the water than we are used to seeing this time of year, as we tend to get the first plug of mud through Quake between the third and fourth week in May historically speaking. That said, the forecast is calling for highs in the sixties and a decent amount of rain starting on Sunday so we should start to see the beginning of our actual runoff here by next week.
It’s been a crazy week out there ladies and gentleman. Lots of instability and fear going around these days but we will get through the hard times and this too shall pass. The good news is that there’s no better place to distance yourself from all the stress and anxiety of life than on a river, and you could do worse than spend an afternoon on the Upper Madison these days. If you can’t make it here do yourself a favor and find one in your own back yard, sit on the bank and just watch the water flow…it’ll do you good.
